As soon as the Suffet was in the town the principal men came to greet him.  He had himself taken to the vapour baths, and called for his cooks.

Three hours afterwards he was still immersed in the oil of cinnamomum with which the basin had been filled; and while he bathed he ate flamingoes’ tongues with honied poppy-seeds on a spread ox-hide.  Beside him was his Greek physician, motionless, in a long yellow robe, directing the re-heating of the bath from time to time, and two young boys leaned over the steps of the basin and rubbed his legs.  But attention to his body did not check his love for the commonwealth, for he was dictating a letter to be sent to the Great Council, and as some prisoners had just been taken he was asking himself what terrible punishment could be devised.

“Stop!” said he to a slave who stood writing in the hollow of his hand.  “Let some of them be brought to me!  I wish to see them!”

And from the bottom of the hall, full of a whitish vapour on which the torches cast red spots, three Barbarians were thrust forward:  a Samnite, a Spartan, and a Cappadocian.

“Proceed!” said Hanno.

“Rejoice, light of the Baals! your Suffet has exterminated the ravenous hounds!  Blessings on the Republic!  Give orders for prayers!” He perceived the captives and burst out laughing:  “Ah! ha! my fine fellows of Sicca!  You are not shouting so loudly to-day!  It is I!  Do you recognise me?  And where are your swords?  What really terrible fellows!” and he pretended to be desirous to hide himself as if he were afraid of them.  “You demanded horses, women, estates, magistracies, no doubt, and priesthoods!  Why not?  Well, I will provide you with the estates, and such as you will never come out of!  You shall be married to gibbets that are perfectly new!  Your pay? it shall be melted in your mouths in leaden ingots! and I will put you into good and very exalted positions among the clouds, so as to bring you close to the eagles!”

The three long-haired and ragged Barbarians looked at him without understanding what he said.  Wounded in the knees, they had been seized by having ropes thrown over them, and the ends of the great chains on their hands trailed upon the pavement.  Hanno was indignant at their impassibility.

“On your knees! on your knees! jackals! dust! vermin! excrements!  And they make no reply!  Enough! be silent!  Let them be flayed alive!  No! presently!”

He was breathing like a hippopotamus and rolling his eyes.  The perfumed oil overflowed beneath the mass of his body, and clinging to the scales on his skin, made it look pink in the light of the torches.

He resumed: 

“For four days we suffered greatly from the sun.  Some mules were lost in crossing the Macaras.  In spite of their position, the extraordinary courage—­Ah!  Demonades! how I suffer!  Have the bricks reheated, and let them be red-hot!”

A noise of rakes and furnaces was heard.  The incense smoked more strongly in the large perfuming pans, and the shampooers, who were quite naked and were sweating like sponges, crushed a paste composed of wheat, sulphur, black wine, bitch’s milk, myrrh, galbanum and storax upon his joints.  He was consumed with incessant thirst, but the yellow-robed man did not yield to this inclination, and held out to him a golden cup in which viper broth was smoking.